Dru Blair

[Jonathan]

A friend of mine who loves photorealism sent me this link to artist Dru Blair's work:

http://www.drublair.com/comersus/store/workshops/tica.htm

The site is image-heavy, so it may take a while to load.

Here's Blair's definition of art:

"Art is the selective re-creation or conversion of reality by the human mind into concrete imagery according to an artist's metaphysical value judgments. Real or imagined concepts are filtered and altered through the human mind to the artist's hand to create an image or sound that did not exist before."

Sound familiar?

He also has some interesting comments on his own work and the genre of photorealism (but not so interesting comments on photography -- like many people who haven't vigorously explored photography's unlimited possibilities, he seems to imagine that his own limitations define the medium).

J

Edited May 30, 2007 by Jonathan

[Barbara Branden]

But isn't there a serious esthetic problem when the artist has to tell the viewer that it's not a photograph he's looking at, it's a painting? Why bother painting it?

I sometimes like photorealism when the subjects are inanimate objects. but not when they are people. And by the way, your own work is very different.

Barbara

[Jonathan]

But isn't there a serious esthetic problem when the artist has to tell the viewer that it's not a photograph he's looking at, it's a painting?

Would you say that there's a serious aesthetic problem if a writer had to tell readers that it was not a factual account that they were reading, but a fictional one? Is knowing that one has entered into a simulation essential to the function of art? I don't think that it is. Knowing might improve or diminish our appreciation of a creator's skills, but I don't think it has anything to do with our aesthetic responses to the work itself - what we think that it means to us, what feelings it evokes, what it allows us to experience, etc. But even if a case could be made that a viewer knowing that a thing is art is essential to its being art, I don't think that it's unreasonable to include an "external" announcement (whether written or verbal) that a painting is a painting (and not a photograph) along with the painting, just as it's not unreasonable to print the words "a novel by Harland Williams" on a book's cover.

Besides, I don't see photography as necessarily not being an art form, so it's hard for me to think in terms of an artist needing to explain that his art is one type of art (a painting) but not another (a photograph). To me, your question is like being asked if there's a serious aesthetic problem if a composer has to tell listeners that his work is not a scherzo but a minuet.

Also, before photography was invented, many artists sought to make their subjects look real - more real than what we think photographs appear to be. In effect, their goal was to take Rand's idea of allowing man to experience the embodiment of his highest abstractions, only to go a step further - to allow man to experience those abstractions as really real; not as if they were concretes, but as concretes.

Why bother painting it?

Here's what Blair says about his photorealism:

Photorealism

As a style, Photorealism has a few detractors, who often dismiss it as pointless, or non-art. They fail to realize that many photorealistic paintings are not mere copies of photographs, but interpretations of reality based on the artist's vision. The act of merely copying a photograph has no artistic merit except to hone one's artistic skills. Most of my aviation paintings would be impossible to photograph, such as Timing is Everything for example. This painting of Tica is not just a copy of a photograph, but is a product of many artistic decisions, whereas I deviated from the reference photo for more aesthetic appeal.

I sometimes like photorealism when the subjects are inanimate objects. but not when they are people.

Why? Do you approach the beauty of a still life or landscape so much differently than how you approach the beauty of a figure?

And by the way, your own work is very different.

I think so too. Those here on OL who may have thought that some of my work was photorealistic should compare it to Blair's. I think my work is practically Impressionistic compared to his.

J

[Barbara Branden]

Would you say that there's a serious aesthetic problem if a writer had to tell readers that it was not a factual account that they were reading, but a fictional one? [

Jonathan, this isn't a valid comparison. There would be a serious problem if a poet had to tell his readers that it was poetry they were reading and not prose, or if a mathematician had to announce that the problem he was writing about was in algebra, not geometry, of if a composer had to say that his music was a symphony and not a concerto.

I'm not suggesting that photography isn't art -- or that it is. I don't havr an opinion on that.

Barbara

[Jonathan]

Would you say that there's a serious aesthetic problem if a writer had to tell readers that it was not a factual account that they were reading, but a fictional one? [

Jonathan, this isn't a valid comparison. There would be a serious problem if a poet had to tell his readers that it was poetry they were reading and not prose, or if a mathematician had to announce that the problem he was writing about was in algebra, not geometry, of if a composer had to say that his music was a symphony and not a concerto.

I'm not suggesting that photography isn't art -- or that it is. I don't havr an opinion on that.

Barbara

Barbara,

Apparently I'm misunderstanding you. I think the examples you've given might present minor problems as far as defining or categorizing the concepts involved and the entities to which they refer, but I don't see how such issues are aesthetic problems, which I thought was your original concern.

And I don't see how my example (of readers not knowing if a book is a work of fiction) is not a valid comparison to viewers not knowing that an image is a painting. If you were to read a book which was convincingly written in the style of a biography, you'd likely believe that it was a factual account of the life of a real person. You'd have to be told that it's not (and, in fact, we are usually told in advance that books are fiction, via the words "novel" or "fiction" printed on or in them, or by the book's placement in the fiction section of a bookstore or library). Why wouldn't this be an example of the same problem that you're concerned about regarding a painting that you thought was a photo, a poem which you thought was prose, a symphony you thought was a concerto, or an algebraic expression you thought was a geometric one?

I'm not grasping the nature of the problem that worries you. If it's a matter of hybrids presenting potential conceptual confusions, I don't think of it as a serious problem. If a person encounters things that could be called photo-paintings, prose poetry, symphonic concerti or algebraic geometry, she can easily enough identify them as such, or identify them however else she wishes.

By the way, there are photographers who like to create in styles that make their work look like sketches or paintings. Would your concerns apply to their work as well?

J